Generally, selective call receivers sub:scribing to a paging system are capable of receiving messages broadcast from the paging system addressed to one or a group of selective call receivers. The selective call receivers, by monitoring an assigned frequency, receive the messages from a central transmitter. Each message intended for a particular selective call receiver is encoded with the address of that selective call receiver which notifies the selective call receiver that a message is being sent from the central transmitter.
Some selective call receivers have acknowledge-back capability, that is, the selective call receivers are capable of responding to the transmission of an address from the central paging station by transmitting a short message to the central paging system to confirm receipt of its address or to redirect the message to an alternative selective call receiver. Similarly, an acknowledge-back paging system include:s a central station which broadcast messages to one or a group of selective call receivers having acknowledge-back capabilities, the group of selective call receivers, upon receipt of the message, transmit an acknowledge-back response to the central station, preferably on a different frequency sub-band being allocated to the selective call receivers in the group.
Additionally, some selective call receivers are capable of receiving multi-recipient messages or information from various types of information services, for example, stock markets, sports, weather and new reports, etc. The multi-recipient messages, when transmitted, are capable of being received by only those pagers who are authorized to access the multi-recipient messages. Therefore, once a selective call receiver is authorized to access multi-recipient messages, the selective call receiver receives that type of message when it is being transmitted unless the pager is turned-off. Accordingly, the selective call receivers receive message only when the paging central station is transmitting and may devote enormous amounts of time receiving a very long message which shortens battery life because battery saving features are disabled when the selective call receiver is receiving the multi-recipient messages from an information services.
Thus, what is needed is a convenient and simple method for subscribing to a plurality of information services.